‘Triumph and Demise’ wins 2014 Walkley Book Award

5 December 2014 Books+Publishing

Paul Kelly has won this year’s Walkley Book Award for Triumph and Demise: The Broken Promise of a Labor Generation (MUP).

Kelly received the award during the Walkley Awards for Excellence in Journalism in Sydney on 4 December. His book was chosen from a shortlist of three, which included Prisoner X (Rafael Epstein, MUP) and The Prince: Faith, Abuse and George Pell (David Marr, Black Inc.).

The judges described Kelly’s book, which analyses the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government from 2007 to 2013, as ‘an outstanding work of journalism as history from one of our finest writers and thinkers’. ‘[Kelly] demonstrates rare skill in capturing intimate testimony from key players, while managing to stand back from the tumult to offer calm observation and reflections on politics and the nation.’

Paul Toohey’s essay ‘That Sinking Feeling: Asylum Seekers and the Search for the Indonesian Solution’, published in Quarterly Essay 53 (Black Inc.), won the Walkley Award for Feature Writing Long (over 4000 words).

The Walkley Book Award is presented annually to recognise excellence in Australian nonfiction and long-form journalism. To see a list of all the winners in this year’s Walkley Awards, click here.

Category: Local news